Hillary Clinton On Her White Privilege: “Where Do I Start?”

The Presidential candidate faced a new test.

At last night's Brown & Black Democratic Presidential Forum, Hillary Clinton was asked a direct question about white privilege from an audience member: “Can you tell us what the term white privilege means to you, and can you give an example from your life or career when you think you have benefited from it?”

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Clinton responded with a long, somewhat meandering answer after the crowd stopped cheering. “Where do I start?” she wondered. “I was born white, middle-class, in the middle of America. I went to good public schools; I had a very strong, supportive family; I had a lot of great experiences growing up; I went to a wonderful college; I went to law school. I never really knew what was or wasn’t part of the privilege, I just knew that I was a lucky person. Being lucky is in part related to who I am, where I’m from, and the opportunities that I had.”

“I’ll tell you when I first realized that I was privileged,” Clinton continued, “both because I was white and because I was economically stable… when I was about 11 years old, the church asked if some of us would volunteer to babysit for the children of migrant workers on Saturdays… At the end of the day… [when] the kids saw [their parents], they just dropped everything and began running for their mothers and their fathers, holding their arms out. I remember like it was yesterday watching that and thinking, I used to do that with my father. And I’m watching these kids and their families, they have to work so hard, and the place they live is not very nice. And I just felt you know, I have a different kind of life.”